At length, in 1626, came Peter Minuit with an ample commission from the all-powerful Company, who organized something like a system of civil government comprehending all the settlements.
Evidences of prosperity and growing wealth began to multiply.

But one is impressed with the merely secular and commercial character of the enterprise and with the tardy and feeble signs of religious life in the colony.

In 1626, when the settlement of Manhattan had grown to a village of thirty houses and two hundred souls, there arrived two official "sick-visitors," who undertook some of the public duties of a pastor.

On Sundays, in the loft over the horse-mill, they would read from the Scriptures and the creeds.

And two years later, in 1628, the village, numbering now about two hundred and seventy souls, gave a grateful welcome to Jonas Michaelius, minister of the gospel.